Just Common Sense?

A day or two ago, I picked up a book on a book stall written by a Christian woman who was advocating that women should obey their husbands (AKA "complimentarianism", AKA "male-headship").

Now, I confess to only reading two pages, but this is what I read.

The author talked about how, marriage certificate in hand, she set out at the beginning of her marriage to change her husband into what she wanted him to be. She recounted how their marriage became more and more difficult for both of them as she set her sights on her own objectives of the sort of person her husband should be and tried with increasing lack of success to change him.

The bit where I finished reading said something like "Too many women train their husbands and obey their children when they should be obeying their husbands and training their children."

Well, guess what? This egalitarian agrees with all of those sentiments. It seems to me that this is just common sense.

Children should be lovingly and gently trained and certainly not obeyed; children need adults to establish boundaries at a young age and then to help them learn to establish their own boundaries as they get older.

And no-one in their right mind should ever marry a person with the thought that their spouse could be perfect if only this and that and that were changed. Assuming that a person has wisely chosen a spouse, the key to spiritual growth is in learning to love the person as they are rather than in trying to change them. The sooner anyone learns this in a marriage, the better for both parties. This is just total common sense.

My only point would be that this goes for both parties. Men should not expect to marry a woman so as to change her into My Ideal Wife any more than a woman should try to change a man into My Ideal Husband.

The Apostle Paul had a lot to say about law and grace; including the fact that grace does not mean that we should abandon ourselves to sinful behaviour. But I think that Paul's insight was that legal solutions to peace on earth don't work. If God actually did legislate that women must strive to change themselves according to their husband's command, this legislation isn't going to result in a loving, peaceful marriage. However, if both parties sincerely believe that they are to love the other and to do everything in their power to serve the other, then love will prevail. (This is actually a tautology because Christian love is, by definition, serving another.)

The Law fears freedom and sees the freedom of love and grace as potentially chaotic, therefore Law strives to control Other People. Ironically, it is only the very freedom that Law fears that will result in the peace and harmony that Law wants.